Part II

THE JOURNEY

In the morning, the sun rose cheerfully above the two mourners. Despite their grief and the precarious nature of their place of refuge—high in an old oak—their weary bodies had slept soundly. It had been a warm night but miraculously the mosquitoes had not found them.

Cora rubbed the sleep from her eyes and massaged her lower back. She was stiff beyond belief. As she moved about a sharp pain shot through her right leg. She groaned softly and steadied herself against a rough barked tree limb.

"Are you well?" Uncas asked from the branch below her. He straddled it confidently, not even bothering to use his hands for balance as he sat away from the safety of the trunk and at least a full rod from the ground. Cora was in no mood to be that careless or brave in the early morning.

"It's nothing," she reassured him.

He grunted knowingly and cracked his neck. Then he rolled off the thick limb, keeping his legs locked tightly around it, and grabbed a good hold of a smaller limb a few feet lower down. He relaxed his legs and lowered himself stiffly to the ground. Cora pinched her lips together at the display of strength and ease. It reminded her of the summer spent at Auchinbowie and George's antics in the trees. But she was no longer fourteen and she had spent the night in the tree.

It took her several minutes, but she climbed down after him without embarrassing herself. Once on firm ground she began to pace and rebraid her hair up out of her face. Uncas had his back to her while he sorted the objects that they had brought along with them: two muskets, one pistol, three powder horns, two pouches of lead, a bullet mould, two water canteens, an unstrung bow and a quiver half full of arrows, a small bag that held medicine and bandages and any personal effects Uncas had, a coil of thin cord, and Gamut's pitch-pipe. She kept the song book in her pocket.

"Have you ever shot a musket?" He asked without turning around as he fingered the weapon in question. Cora stopped mid pace and glanced over it, comparing it to others she had used.

"Yes, though they were smaller. Will there be food to eat today or not?" As she said it, she realised she wasn't very hungry. Food seemed to have little appeal.

He shrugged in reply and set the gun down. She continued on her distracted journey from tree to bush to Uncas to bush to tree. "We may come across wild berries of some sort," he said, interrupting her musing again. "If I see game in my bow's range we'll bring it with us and cook it tonight. When we reach the river we ought to be able to tarry long enough to catch some fish."

Cora nodded to herself and said a quick and silent prayer for nourishment and strength and the will to eat when food was offered to her. After that they gathered up the guns and things, and, without much talk, they walked north. The morning sky was a grey blue. The sun was nowhere to be seen though it gradually brightened the heavens. Birds chattered and sang in the trees and swooped low overhead, unbothered by the strange pilgrims who toiled below. Cora found herself relaxing. It was almost impossible not to. In the woods where they walked it seemed as though there could not be a war being waged. It did not seem like there could be men dying at that very moment. It was too innocent and beautiful a place for such a thought to remain. Even the pressure of the musket and powder horns on her back and her pistol on her leg were not enough to disillusion her.

Uncas, whatever was passing through his mind, walked ever onward, unspeaking, calm. He seemed to disappear at times between the steadfast old trees which grew in clumps and glens. He was like a shadow, not in that he followed, because he did not, but in that he did not seem present. When she looked upon his face, his eyes had a distant gleam, as though his thoughts wandered far away on glummer paths than this dew-crystalled path they walked. Wither, she knew not where.

They continued on like this in silence until Cora noticed the familiar indent of a horse's hoof in the soft dirt at her feet. It shattered her idyllic world. She no longer walked through a forested paradise but a stretch of woods between two log forts erected for the purpose of a bloody, brutal war. She walked in the Province of New-York, very very very near the Canadian border. These were the woods in which Nathaniel and Gamut had died, the woods in which her sister had died, the woods in which her father held a fort against the might of the French General Montcalm's army. It came upon her suddenly, the overwhelming grief of loss. Cora dropped to the ground with a short cry, clutching at the necklace that hung upon her throat. She brushed the leaves and twigs away so as to see the hoof print more clearly.

"Uncas," she called, not looking up.

His hand descended suddenly upon her shoulder, and her head whipped around in surprise. He had been so far ahead, yet now he was beside her. Uncas' expression was that of concern. She looked away, unable at that moment to bear his pity. "Would this belong to one of the horses we let go, or is it more likely to belong to an officer?" She pointed at the U-shaped indent in the dirt.

He crouched down beside her but his hand did not slide off her shoulder. If anything, its pressure was heightened when his arm rested across her shoulder as he bent over the track. Distantly, she thought it was very odd that he did not move it away. But when he began to measure the width and length of the track his hand was lifted off as though there had been nothing strange in the action.

Finally he looked up at her. "I'd say it could be your grey. If it is, and we can catch her, we'd make better time." Then his tone and expression changed. He once more adopted the worried look. "Are you well? I heard your cry, I thought some trouble had come upon you."

She stilled. "No. I only saw this, and remembered." Looking out at a spray of leaves that rose out to the dirt like a standard on a pole, she found the courage to add, "The woods, they are so calm, I forgot. I— It all came back when I saw the track. That is all." She did not mention her sister— that was too recent and the thought of her still clutched Cora's throat uncomfortably.

He nodded uncomfortably. "It is not wise in this area to forget. But we are safe I think. I do believe we are the only humans for several miles around. Come"—he stood and stretched out his hand—"let us not tarry." He gestured at the hoof mark.

Cora took the hand and let him pull her to her feet. She was still somewhat overwhelmed by grief and not a little fear, but Uncas had a reassuring air about him that calmed her. It was his knowledge and his confidence that, tempered with his kindness, and, she almost thought, tenderness, that did it. For a little while Uncas stayed by her side, helping her along with his hand. After a time, though, he began to move more quickly, and as it happened, he came to lead the way some several rods ahead. His pace was steady but bearable, even though she had never walked more than five miles at one time.

As they went, they did not speak to one another unnecessarily. There was no polite small talk between them. Neither had need of it, nor did either seem to desire it after their last interaction. They were both solitary souls, though neither had ever turned away good company.

Cora watched the dirt for another hoof print, but the ground soon grew rocky and dry and she could not tell whether the horse's path had branched off again or if it had simply left no mark upon the dry ground. There was no trace and at last she ceased to worry over it.

It was near midday when Uncas called her to him. She found him kneeling on the ground picking purple-black berries off a seeming wall of sharp brambles. He looked up when she stopped beside him; she was breathing more heavily than she might have wished for what seemed so short a walk.

"Breakfast," he said by way of explanation. He waved his hand at the wall of green and black.

Together they gathered a good deal and ate them, leaning against a nearby tree. Their weapons and other burdens lay in a pile at their sides, close in reach. The berries all but melted in Cora's mouth. They were warm and sweet and they stained her fingers very purple. Even though she was not hungry she enjoyed them. The sun was high in the sky even if she could not see it and the day was very hot. Under the tree Cora could almost forget that. She let her eyes drift shut without any effort extended to keep them open.

When she woke again the sun had moved in the sky. At her side, fast asleep, sat Uncas; a few yards away two horses grazed. It seemed to be such a natural scene, the sun and the horses and the trees and Uncas and the bees humming over the grass as though there might be some small sip of nectar left in the small flowers that littered the turf. As if feeling her wandering gaze, Mary Ann looked up, her eyes so large and wise and kind.

As she stared at her horse, Cora remembered that she really ought to catch her. With a tremendous effort, Cora stood slowly, both to not startle the animals and to preserve her joints, and called to Mary Ann. The horse hesitated and moved off a little ways. Cora called again and clicked her tongue. Reluctantly, Mary Ann obliged and the gelding followed her example. Humming softly to the horses, Cora inspected them both for injury, feeling their legs and cleaning their hooves with a sharp stick she took from the earth. Both horses were in near perfect condition and she kissed both their noses when she was fully certain that the shots fired at them had been wild. Mary Ann head butted her affectionately.

"Uncas," Cara called gently, intending to tell him of their good fortune. His head jerked up and he began scanning the clearing, from the blackberries to the tree line. He was fingering his musket. Cora was so startled by his abrupt awakening that she fell silent. When he was satisfied that they had not been surrounded while they slept, Uncas rose and stretched. He looked around at the trees again and then at the ground and then up at the sky. Finally his eyes settled on her and the horses. He smiled brittlely. Without a word he gathered up their things and handed Cora her share. "I'll boost you up," he declared. Then kneeling down by Mary Ann, Uncas did just that.

"I hate wearing this style riding habit when I ride bareback," she told him matter of factly while he stood at her mount's shoulder, "it's utterly impossible to mount alone."

Uncas hummed; "If we come across the Tremains, I'll see about getting you some breeches or trousers."

"Who?" she questioned, having not expected a response to what she had intended only as a way to break the unnerving silence that now hung over the area.

"The friend I was telling you about; Old Tremain they call him, though he's no older than Natty." He added as an afterthought, "His first name is Johnny, I think."

She smiled at the thought of wearing trousers, wondering what her mother would have thought of such a thing, while Uncas mounted the gelding. Uncas waited for her to compose her thoughts and then led the way back into the trees.